“It is simply preposterous to fancy that a child with such an abnormal cerebral development could ever have become a leader of armies or a law-giver. The wretched woman naturally avoids the contemplation of the monstrosity she has brought into the world.”
From that section of the Pincian Gardens overlooking the Borghese Villa and grounds projects a portion of the ancient wall of Rome, that was pronounced unsafe and ready to fall in the time of Belisarius. Being miraculously held in place by St. Peter, there is now no real danger, unsteady as it looks, that this end of the Pincio will give way under the weight of the superincumbent wall, and plunge down the precipice among the ilex-trees and stone-pines beneath. In the shadow of this wall, tradition holds that blind Belisarius begged from the passers-by.
With the deepening glow of the sunset—
“Flushing tall cypress-bough,
Temple and tower”—
the Roman promenaders and riders flock homeward from Borghese and Pincio. Foreigners, less familiar with the character of the unwholesome airs and noxious dews of twilight, linger later until they learn better. Mingling with the flood of black coats that poured down the shorter ascent in sight of my windows were rills of scarlet and purple that puzzled me for awhile. At length I made it my business to examine them more closely from the parlor balcony in their passage through the street at the front of the house.
“There go the ganders!” shouted Boy, who accompanied me to the look-out.
“I should call them flamingoes?” laughed I.
The students in the Propaganda wear long gowns, black, red, or purple, and broad-brimmed hats, each nationality having its uniform. The members of each division take their “constitutional” at morning and evening in a body, striding along with energy that sends their skirts flapping behind them in a gale of their own making. They seldom missed a band-afternoon upon the Pincio, and were a picturesque element in the lively display. Boy’s name for them was an honest mispronunciation of a polysyllable too big for him to handle. But I never saw them stalking in a slender row across the Piazza di Spagna and up the hill without a smile at the random shot. The name had a sort of aptness when fitted to the sober youngsters whose deportment was solemn to grotesqueness by contrast with the volatile crowd they threaded in their progress to the pools of refreshment prescribed as a daily recreation—the fleeting glimpses of the world outside of their pasture.